The hero of this novel is Gunter Glass, a young man who relies on Wikipedia to get him through life and is obsessed by glass, thanks to being left in a glass museum by his slightly feckless dad as a child. This life story is told by Gunter's friend, Dean Angela Winterbottom who is a member of the clergy at Salisbury Cathedral and we are told at the beginning that Angela has taken liberties with Gunter's story. And so we have a tale where Gunter, having succeeded as a window cleaner in Salisbury, is drawn to the big city to clean the windows of the Shard. Gunter takes a room in a flat with a man nicknamed Steppenwolf who only has contact days on Fridays and smells of fish and finds a girlfriend. His new boss is a racist and bigot and Gunter does not trust him, he does like his chauffeur Frank. There are moments that are laugh out loud funny in this novel, particularly Angela's footnotes that are dotted throughout the novel. There is plenty of philosophy, making this very much a novel that tries to deal with the meaning of life and this is liberally mingled with bible passages. Not surprisingly the novel relies very much on cliche characters and situations and the humour often didn't quite hit the mark but generally an entertaining read. ( )